Weekly Wrap 2/4/18: Nunes Memo, Amtrak and Nassar

The week began with word of Congressman Devin Nunes’s memo perhaps being released. Over the course of the week, the simmering news story became headline news as the FBI, Department of Justice, Democrats, Republicans and Fox News elevated its importance to dizzying proportions.

Republicans claimed the memo would show corruption within the intelligence community. The intelligence community claimed the release would endanger intelligence gathering techniques and violate confidence. Democrats claimed the document’s only purpose was to undermine the Mueller investigation.

On Friday afternoon, the Devin Nunes memo was released.

Coverage has been very divided on whether the memo is a political ploy to undermine Mueller, or whether the memo is proof that there is a vast conspiracy to bring down Donald Trump.

Coverage has not been evenly divided. The majority of news organizations find the memo to be a political tool. Fox News has argued that the memo is damning of Trump’s opponents.

This was the main story all week. Several news outlets are focusing coverage on it.

Other major stories include the Super Bowl and an Amtrak crash that took place this morning in South Carolina.

Lede: A fierce partisan battle over the Justice Department and its role in the Russia investigation moves into its second week Monday as Democrats try to persuade the House Intelligence Committee to release a 10-page rebuttal to a controversial Republican memo alleging surveillance abuse.

The panel’s top Democrat, Rep. Adam B. Schiff (Calif.), is expected to offer a motion to release his party’s response to the Republican document during a committee meeting scheduled for Monday at 5 p.m. It was not immediately clear whether Republicans would join Democrats in voting for the document’s release, as some members of the GOP have expressed concerns about its contents.

Fox has drastically scaled back memo coverage on Sunday, but they have been cycling headlines quickly today so it may re-emerge. Fox has a record of dropping stories when they become harmful to the President. We will cover this more later this week.

Lede: The Democratic National Committee entered the midterm elections year “dead broke,” with a paltry $400,000 in party coffers, according to federal records.

The committee finished 2017 with roughly $6.5 million in available cash and about $6.1 million in debt, according to recently released Federal Election Commission filings. That leaves a balance of just $422,582 to start a year that will culminate in midterm elections, in which Democrats are hoping to recapture a majority in the House.

Lede: South Carolina Republican Rep. Trey Gowdy said the recently released, controversial GOP memo alleging FBI abuses of its surveillance authority does not have “any impact on the Russia probe,” and even without the Steele dossier, there would be a Russia investigation.

“There is a Russia investigation without a dossier,” Gowdy said in an interview that aired Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” days after he announced his decision not to seek re-election.